Cranes in Nigeria: How long before they fade?
Kizito is one of the emerging talents, but will we still have him in three years? For continuity, not just Fufa but society must take responsibility. Photo by Ismail Kezaala
It might be several years longer than the lifetime of a mosquito, but a football player’s career is still one of the shortest things out there. If it can avoid being sprayed with Doom, or survive being crushed against the wall by the open palm of an angry pursuant, the average male mosquito will live for 10 to 20 days and the female for 3 and 100 days.
Anyone who has endured a bout of malaria will tell you that 100 days is way too long for the disease-carrying ectoparasites to live; yet anyone who watched Lionel Messi delightfully nutmeg James Milner and Fernandinho, and waltz past Manchester City’s bedazzled players all night at the Camp Nou last week will lament that footballers don’t entertain long enough.
Not every footballer can be a Ryan Giggs, Javier Zanetti or Paolo Maldini, and so even if a good many hang around beyond 32, they have long outlived their usefulness by then ought to be thwarted like giant mosquitoes.
It is generally worse for the African footballer who, unlike Messi, will not be discovered by Barcelona in his country at 11, taken to Spain, groomed, and later thrust onto the scene as a teenage prodigy ready to conquer the world.
By the time the African footballer crawls out of his village or neighbourhood and skips over the high hurdles littering the way to establishing himself at a recognisable club in his country, your Messi has been to two Champions League finals and a World Cup, and has won the Ballon D’Or.
Thankfully, the African footballer has managed to fit into the not-so-damning European stereotype of the ‘late developer’, many making up for lost time by playing well into their 30s (even 40s, truth be told); it is such a joy to see Didier Drogba, Kolo Toure and Yakubu Ayegbeni still plugging away in England, Seydou Keita, Samuel Eto’o, Michael Essien and Sulley Muntari in Italy, and several others lower down the food chain in the US, China, the Middle East and even India. Sadly, the average Ugandan player is not anything like his West African brother in this light; he is more akin to the mosquito, here today and gone tomorrow.
Watching the Uganda Cranes beat Nigeria on Wednesday night, one would ideally be thrilled at the hope of things to come, the promise from newcomers like Shafiq Bakaki, Derrick Tekkwo, Ibrahim Kiyemba and the gifted Keziron Kizito.
That is until one remembers our track record as a country that does not engage in systematic nurturing, monitor development, or ensure continuity. For one, the U-23 side knocked out of the All Africa Games qualifiers the other day only had only one graduate from the promising U-20s who lost to Ghana in the Africa Youth Championships a couple of years earlier, and there were several Keziron Kizito types there who have vanished without a trace. Our federation takes a huge chunk of the blame, but our entire society takes responsibility for the culture of short-termism we have cultivated. I was astounded by the enormity of the noxious reaction to Moses Magogo’s announcement that his regime was targeting Afcon qualification in 2019. Is that too long to wait as we organise? Really?
On the Pakasa pages we hail the rags-to-riches stories of Uganda’s rich who patiently built empires from scratch, but in reality we crave to accumulate the instant fortune of the fella who embezzled donour money for government programs or diverted funds from the pot of ordinary citizens’ savings.
Why will our footballers not have the shelf life of mosquitoes?
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